


Welcome to Kennara

by StrandsofNehn



Series: For the Sake of Us [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Captives, F/M, First Meetings, Getting to Know Each Other, Interrogation, Lynea likes to be Captain, Nicknames, taken captive, the lady saves the knight in distress, then proceeds to taunt him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 12:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11148279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrandsofNehn/pseuds/StrandsofNehn
Summary: Where a scout loses his entire squad, is saved by a dashing woman to only be taken prisoner. Now he has to navigate the woman's sharp smile and her bands ascertaining stares. Why does the big one seem the safest? ... Can he go home now?





	Welcome to Kennara

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of background. There was a country, Kennara, that f*cked up once upon a time and got themselves Cursed– the people, the country, the everything. No one truly agrees on what exactly happened since it was centuries ago but it’s made the natural into the supernatural with a hefty dose of deadly and the people crippled in certain ways that I won’t get into. Most of the survivors live in “Houses”– a remnant of Kennara’s infrastructure. Think Tolkien, like House of Durin.

He’s the first outsider Lynea’s seen in years. He’s tall and regal and so… young. He carries himself as one who has never been responsible for anything in all his life.

Likely why all his fellows are dead. 

Not that Lynea didn’t mean to save them; she mourns the loss of innocent life thrown at the unforgiving rage of the Cursed Lands. No one truly knows what is here, what they will face or how to survive it. Bands like his have come to the Lands countless times and often none survive. He would not have, had she not saved him.

And why did she save him? This man so young he’s more a boy? Why did she fling herself and her own men into a battle that could have meant their own deaths? A wyvern is a vicious foe, and they do not go down easy. She made a foolish choice saving him.

She lost two men saving one, useless House-boy. The math does not shed a good light on her decision and Lynea wonders how she’ll explain it to the council. She can’t continuously make bad calls. Not if she wants to maintain her hard-won rank, not if she wants to advance further.

What shall she do with him?

She looks back at the houseboy. He stumbles after Hammon, face shell-shocked and white as sheet. Lynea can’t fault him. The evidence of the slaughter was… horrific. Still, as sorry as she feels for the man, she needs him to be useful. To provide insight or gain. This can’t be another foolish move on her part.

Lynea prays to the Mother that the houseboy has information that she can use. She’s in some deep shit if he doesn’t.

They make it back to camp and the houseboy hasn’t uttered a word. He’s still covered in blood and ichor, his gaze is still cloudy and he reeks. Still, he manages to deal a blow to one of her men when they relieved him of his weapons.

A fighter, then, a survivor.

Lynea can definitely work with a survivor. 

Hammon takes him to clean up and keeps an eye on him. She’s grateful; Hammon is uncannily sharp, if a bit tight lipped about his gleanings. Besides, she wants this contained. She doesn’t want the crew to know anything about this boy before she does. Hammon will keep his mouth shut, always does.

Hammon has been with her since the beginning. He's her more trusted friend and confidant, her unofficial bodyguard. Ancients, he’s been with her since before the beginning, really. Trailed her and looked after her in every place and shoddy situation the winds of fate seemed fit to take her.

In her tent, she carefully strips of her armor and gets to cleaning it. Killing wyverns is messy buisness and Cursed blood stains.

She’s nearly done when Hammon comes, goading an anxious looking Houseboy into the tent before him. She spares him all of a glance, enough to see he’s clean and unarmed save for a knife on his belt and tense as a wound spring. She continues treating her armor.

“Welcome to Kennara.”

She lets it hang there, lets him take her in and wonder. Wonder at the scars that pucker the skin of her side, her back and right arm, all on full display as she sits in cloth breeches and the wrappings around her chest. She’ll have to replace the wrappings likely, the shirt, currently saturated with Wyvern blood, she may just have to dye black when they make it back to the hold and be done with it.

“Who are you?”

Lynea snorts and continues working the oil into the leather, “Bit of an unimaginative question.”

The houseboy stays silent a moment, then returns, “Unless you are striving to be the shiniest, armored savage in these Mother-forsaken Lands, your task is done.”

“Perhaps I am. I do like to make a statement.”

“Evidently.”

Lynea grins. Standing, she takes her armor to its place next to her bedroll and removes her sword from its sheath. The houseboy watches her every move, eyes weary but clearer than they were before.

“Let me ask you a question before I answer yours,” she starts, and settles back on the stump she’s been using as a stool, sword over her knees. “Are you of any use, Houseboy? I had two of my men die in my effort to save you and as much I appreciate you pointing out my vanity, I have Hammon for that,” she nods to the man standing at the tent’s entrance. Hammon grins. “And I dislike unfair trades.”

The houseboy eyes the sword, then Lynea. She gives him her most winning smile.

Eventually, he answers, “I suppose that would depend on what you see as useful, my Lady Savage.”

She chuckles at the title and lifts a finger in his direction, “How true! Luckily, I myself am a resourceful woman. I can make most anything work in my favor.”

The houseboy’s eyes flash and Lynea grins again.

“And so can you. Can’t you?”

The houseboy says nothing.

“How delightful,” she purrs.

“Who  _are_ you?” he asks again.

“Tsk, you haven’t given me an answer yet. Why should I indulge your curiosity when you haven’t indulged mine?”

“Because my life hangs in the balance. Yours doesn’t.”

Wrong, but she doesn’t let it show.

“I told you before: I dislike unfair trades.”

“I don’t know what I could be that would be helpful to you. If you are after fairness, which seems a little naive for a woman who has obviously seen the true colors of the world, I can give you my name in exchange for yours.”

Lynea considers him. Sharp, quick and adaptable. Mayhaps a bit too curious but that, too, could be advantageous, if dealt with correctly.

“I will give you three questions.” She says, “If you will respond in kind.”

The houseboy’s eyes are black. Nye impossible to differentiate between pupil and iris. It's unsettling. They seem to swallow the light from the lamp hanging above them. 

She wonders if he feels stripped bare under the gold of her own eyes, as she smirks back into the void of his stare, stark against the black paint covering most her face. She hopes so. It’d only be fair.

“Deal,” he decides and Lynea grins, rocking on her heels a moment. “I’ll go first?”

“We’ll take turns,” she says with a wave.

The houseboy nods and tilts his chin. “Who are you people? Not you, specifically, but your band. Where do you come from?”

“That’s two questions. Which do you want answered?”

“What do you savages call yourselves?”

Lynea barks out a laugh and Hammon chuckles by the entrance. “Well, Houseboy, we call ourselves the Unvanquished. To spite a queen who spited us.”

The houseboy’s eyes went a little wide. “You dare to speak of our last Empress that way?”

“You leap to defend her but she did leave her entire country to flee or die under the Curse. Very few managed to stay and it has not been easy– she did not make it easy. So, I’ll deign to speak of her any way I wish. She is not here to stop me, is she?”

He says nothing.

“Lovely. My turn. What House were you sent from?”

Houseboy presses his lips together. “I don’t wish to tell you.

“No? But I’ve told you who my people are.”

“I don’t trust you not to harm them. You didn’t save any of my team.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true,” she puts in. A twist of her wrist has her blade arch through the air, pointed at him, “I did kill the wyvern before it could kill you.”

He doesn’t seem impressed. Must take a lot of effort to appear that nonplussed. She did skewer the beasts eye like a citrus fruit. She almost applauds him.

“We were once a merchant house. I was sent to see if the Land had healed.”

Lynea’s lips twitch upwards. “Healed? If only we were so lucky.”

“How have you survived here? Kennara is meant to be abandoned.”

“Meant to be abandoned,“ she repeats. “Do you think so little of your motherland?”

It's almost a serious question but she waves her hand in dismissal before he can answer.

"We have survived by trial and error. Blood and skill and the Mother’s blessing.”

“I see.”

Lynea can't but laugh.

“What did your House hope to do if the Lands were, somehow, miraculously healed?" she asks, "Did your leadership even have plans for that?”

Houseboy sets his jaw. “They hope to return home. Reclaim their birthright.”

“ _Birthright?_ ”

“Where,” he interjects, face hard and done with Lynea’s line of questions, apparently– more’s the pity– “are we going?” 

Lynea sighs and mourns the loss of potential information before chiding, “All your questions are very standard so far, Houseboy. Don’t you wish to know my place here, yours? Or how about the most beautiful, if treacherous, view in all the valley? The shade of my favorite underwear, perhaps?”

“My Lady Savage, why you think I would have any interest in what shade of brown any of your clothing may be is beyond me. If this is your standard practice in dealing with others to get what you wish, I’m surprised this tent is all yours. Surely you would be bed-warming for influence.”

Hammon is as still and silent as death behind the houseboy and Lynea’s own posture is not better. For a moment, she indulges in the fantasy of stalking up to him and relieving him of the little knife Hammon allowed him and stretching a string of red along his throat so he may choke on the apology she’d demand.

But Lynea is not brash. Patience. Patience is a virtue.

“Little Houseboy,” she purrs, deciding that her guest is too observation to pretend his words have no effect, “how I gained the influence that I possess is neither your affair or concern. What  _is_ your concern is how I choose to wield it. Your life is in my hands. Such rudeness is not appreciated nor will it be tolerated. If you have trouble remembering that, Hammon will remind you. He’s much less fun than I am.”

The houseboy looks to the man standing at his back. Hammon smiles at him, almost gentle but for the cut of his eyes. When the houseboy turns back to her, his face is a little ashen.

Lynea stands and struts to the houseboy. The houseboy who has a mouth full of fangs and fistfuls of talons that may match her claws. What it means, she isn’t sure. Hopefully that saving him was the right choice. Time will tell.

“I will answer your questions as thus: you are going to our main holding and, as a gift, I’ll tell you that you are currently in the camp of which I am Captain. You may call me such. Names are meant to say who you are, are they not?”

“I…”

Lynea drives the blade of her sword into the ground between them, rests her hands on the sleek hilt still flecked with wyvern blood and grins with all her wanton cruelty. Playtime over.

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“You suppose a great deal. Is there anything that you  _know_?”

“You’ll kill me if I hinder whatever it is you have in motion.”

Lynea can feel her eyes spark. “What else?”

“That the others would want you to.”

“Wrong. They’d practically beg me to let them kill you themselves. Next.”

“I am… trapped here, for the foreseeable future.”

“So it can be taught,” Lynea drawls. “Yes, pet, you are, but not because of me.”

She gestures to Hammon and he grips the houseboy by the arm. “Take him to meet the crew. Make it known that we have a new member and that he isn’t allowed a true weapon, until he realizes where his best chances for living until he’s grey and docile lie.” Lynea looks back him, “Methinks you survived that wyvern by more than just luck, yes?”

The houseboy doesn’t answer but his eyes shine with indignation. Marvelous.

At Hammon’s affirmative, she continues with a shrug, “He’ll bunk with you. At least for now.” She turns back to her bedroll, pulling the sword from the sundered earth with a hand. “Anyone who tries to kill him will have me to answer to and I’ve been feeling…  _creative_ lately.”

“Done.”

“So I am to join your supposed crew? You save me and use me, is that it? A slave to your own ends?”

“Slave?” Lynea repeats, “You think so ill of me and mine. You are not a slave. But you are not a guest either, are you? Guests are invited. And you were not.” She sighs loudly, “So you’ll have to pull your own weight.”

“You want me to view this as a mercy.”

“You may view it however you like, perspective is an individual’s right. I am merely outlining your situation, whether or not it shifts your perspective is entirely your choice.” 

She fixes him with her most calculating stare and feels a shot of glee that he meets it with his own head-on. 

“Kennara is brutal. She will chew you up and spit out your little, mottled bones when she’s done with you. On your own you’re nothing more than an entree. And her people are just the same. Gone are your little baddies who stick up their noses and scoff with offense. Here, we are much more… primal with our feuds. Alone in that, if you even made it that far, you’d be the outsider. No allies. No clue to how the game is run. Sure, you’re a smart one but I doubt you’d be allowed time to figure out the rules. We don’t tend to like outsiders. Cravenhearted little abandoners that they are.” Lynea smiles, “But were you with us…”

She lets it hang there– it worked the first time. 

But it does take him a good minute of staring at her, the sword. “So long as I don’t stand in the way of whatever it is you intend to do.”

“I’m hoping we can come to a better working arrangement than just that. You’ll have to mind your tongue though,” she warns, a sultry smile painted on. “You can do that, can’t you?”

He says nothing but that flash of fury burns in his endlessly black eyes. 

“Fantastic, I look forward to it already.”

“Divine.”

She ignores his disdain. It’s a stressful situation, isn’t it? And Lynea tends to have that affect on people regardless.

“Might I make a suggestion? Consider what you want to be introduced to the crew as, Houseboy, nicknames tend to stick here. And… oh,” she laughs, “I almost forgot.”

Lynea sheaths her sword, lifts her arms grandly and grins that Unvanquished trademark.

“Welcome to Kennara! Where the forest devours, the ocean drowns and the mountains trap you.” She salutes as Hammon starts to drag Houseboy out of the tent, hollering after them.

“May you live long enough to be who’s hungry!”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think! What parts you liked! Which ones got away from me and didn't make sense, etc. Writers live for praise/constructive criticism aka words from humans, you know? We wither like houseplants without it.


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